The Final Flight

by James Blatch

  “Better keep your chart out and radio off,” said Rob. “We’re going to navigate old-school.”

  JR continued the gentle bank. Rob scanned the scene below. Two more police cars caught up with the one that had been chasing them. A crowd of men in various uniforms stood around the base of the tower.

  “This is it now. We’re committed.”

  JR laughed. “You could say that.”

  The Oxfordshire countryside slipped by. JR kept the battered silver Anson just below the clouds, with the nose pointing south-east.

  Rob tapped the compass heading.

  “Let’s throw them off the scent a little, leave the west until Reading when we’re well out of sight.”

  “Good idea.”

  Rob studied the chart.

  “That’s Didcot ahead.” He pointed. “See the brown sprawl beyond? That’s Reading.”

  “Got it,” JR confirmed.

  Rob retrieved a pencil from his coveralls pocket and drew a rough line from Reading to a point between Bristol and Bath.

  From there, they would follow the Severn Estuary and north Devon coast until they were visual with Lundy.

  He showed the new lines to JR, who nodded in appreciation at their simplicity. He roughly measured the distance, checked their cruise speed, and noted the duration of each leg, just in time to start the stopwatch at Swindon.

  After the navigation exercise, there was little else to do.

  Rob sat back. With no distraction, lost in the rhythmic drone of the engine, the full enormity of what had happened started to sink in.

  “You OK?” JR called over the intercom.

  Rob pushed off his headset.

  JR leaned across and tugged at his harness until it released.

  He manoeuvred himself out of the P2 seat and staggered back. Susie caught him and helped him into the torn leather seat next to hers.

  Susie’s breath next to his ear.

  “It’s OK, it’s OK. Just breathe.”

  He closed his eyes and folded himself forward. Her voice was soft and kind, and the breath on his ear was warm. He smelt her sweet scent.

  Slowly, he took deeper breaths; the worst of the panic was passing.

  Opening his eyes, still doubled over, he studied the dirty floor of the old aircraft.

  The dust of a thousand troops transported around the world.

  Some to their deaths. It could be worse.

  Susie’s hand stroked his head; he sat up.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No need to apologise.”

  “It feels like I’ve crossed the Rubicon.” He turned to her. “My old life, it’s gone, isn’t it?”

  “We’re doing the right thing, Rob. Remember what Millie must have gone through, sitting in these very seats, terrified, lying to Kilton. And why? It must have been the most urgent thing in his life, and that’s why we’re here.”

  Rob thought of Millie, alone in the back of the Anson, JR up front, helping but unaware of his real task.

  “But what if we don’t get what we need? Like you said? I can’t go back now. I have nothing to go back to, except Kilton’s fury. He’ll have me arrested.”

  “Let’s hope we’ll get what we need. And when we do, Mark Kilton will be the one under arrest.”

  The aircraft banked and he looked up to see JR with the yoke in one hand and the chart in another.

  “I have to help him.” Rob rose from his seat but turned back to Susie. “I’ve got no wife, no best friend and no career. I hope you’re right.”

  Back in the cockpit, he apologised to JR, who dismissed his words with a wave and patted him on the back.

  The Severn Estuary was directly ahead. Rob made sure JR was following his line on the chart to keep them clear of Bristol Lulsgate Airport.

  The sun came and went as clouds drifted across the sky. Mary stared into the blue spaces between.

  Standing in the Laverstocks’ front room, cup of tea in hand, in front of their large bay window, the wound of Rob’s betrayal still hurt.

  But in the long night hours, with little sleep, she’d had her doubts.

  And she had been surprised by another feeling creeping in.

  Guilt.

  “Why on earth should you feel guilty?” Janet Laverstock said, over breakfast.

  Mary didn’t know the answer, but that didn’t stop the feeling nagging at her.

  Three nights of quiet crying in a strange bed had taken their toll.

  After breakfast, she decided she needed to take action.

  She tried her best to put aside the emotion that clouded her thoughts and remember what exactly Rob had said.

  Not much. But enough for her to believe she was missing something.

  Something that involved Millie. Something that began a series of events which ultimately led her here, living with a snobby woman and her compliant husband.

  The type of happy marriage she couldn’t begin to contemplate.

  Janet had insisted that Rob be given no more chances. But she hadn’t really given him one chance.

  She was losing him, even before Janet Laverstock had called with her shocking news. She knew that. But in the clear light, Mary found it hard to believe she’d lost him to a young lover.

  His insistence, full of clichés about it not being what it seemed, played over in her mind.

  But what to do? She didn’t want to simply arrive back at Trenchard Close.

  She needed to embrace something that had been absent from their marriage for some time.

  Truth.

  And there was only one place she could start.

  Only one person she could truly trust.

  A noise came from the kitchen as Janet hung up the phone. She appeared, with her trademark bouffant of perfect hair.

  “Good news,” she announced. “I’ve found her.”

  JR took them low over the island while he and Rob scrutinised the strip.

  “It looks smooth enough, but then it would from up here,” Rob said.

  They searched for clues to help them with wind speed and direction, eventually spotting a bonfire that showed a fairly stiff south-westerly.

  JR descended on the dead side of a left hand circuit and set them up for a slow approach.

  The Anson banked onto final. Rob gave JR full flaps. He slowed the aircraft down to sixty knots. With the stiff breeze that gave them a pleasingly slow ground speed, he felt confident that the short strip would accommodate them.

  Rob watched as JR skilfully applied thrust with the nose attitude up, holding the aircraft just above the ground, and enabling him to drop on the first part of usable strip.

  He glanced back at Susie, who gazed out of the window.

  They landed with a thump and JR immediately pulled the throttles back to idle and lowered the nose. The ground was indeed rougher than it looked from above. They bounced in their seats before slowing enough to turn.

  It didn’t look like they had much of an area to park, but JR carried on down the strip until they saw a small portion of cut grass off the westerly end.

  After bringing the aircraft to a stop, pointing into wind, JR shut her down. Susie appeared behind them.

  “We have a visitor.”

  She was looking out at a man, maybe in his sixties, walking with a limp toward the aircraft.

  Rob unstrapped and went to the door, opening it and lowering the folding stairs to allow Susie to leave first. He pulled off his flying coveralls before following her.

  “This is Mr Bonner,” said Susie, raising her voice over the stiff breeze. “He knows where Professor Belkin’s cottage is.”

  Rob leant back into the aircraft.

  “We’re off. I hope we won’t be too long.”

  “No problem,” said JR. “I’ll sit here and contemplate my next career.”

  They walked from the grass strip, along a plateau that covered most of the island. Ahead of them lay what looked like a stone lighthouse, isolated and exposed to the prevailing wind.

&
nbsp; “The old Light Cottage in the garden.” Bonner pointed at a small stone building. “The MacPhersons own it now. He’s staying there.”

  Susie thanked him, but before they could walk off, the man asked them, “Who did you say you were again?”

  “Oxford University business,” she replied. “Very urgent.”

  Bonner didn’t look convinced.

  “An urgent maths problem?”

  “Yes!” said Susie brightly, and they set off.

  The cottage was tiny. As they approached it, Rob looked for signs of an ageing maths professor, but it appeared empty.

  They arrived at the small wooden door and glanced at each other before Susie gave it a few hefty thumps with her small fist.

  No sound from within, but the wind carried a new voice to them. They whipped around.

  “Are you looking for me?”

  A grey-haired man, with woollen jumper and baggy red trousers, lowered himself down the grass bank with the aid of a walking stick. A pair of glasses hung from a chain around his neck, and he carried a pair of binoculars.

  “Professor Belkin?” called Susie.

  He didn’t immediately answer, but concentrated on the last few steps. Rob went forward to help him down.

  He steadied himself on the flat ground that ran around the cottage.

  “I am he. To what do I owe this pleasure?” Belkin said, and gave them a warm smile.

  “I’m Robert May and this is my colleague Susie. Perhaps we could go inside?”

  “Yes, if you like. I have little to offer, I’m afraid, but I could rustle up a cup of tea. Or maybe something stronger?”

  He opened the door, which wasn’t locked.

  “Arrive in that thing, did you?” Belkin said, motioning toward the airstrip.

  “We did. I’m afraid it’s rather urgent.”

  The professor took a seat by the door, next to a small cabinet. “Perhaps one of you would be kind enough to make the tea? The fresh air does rather take it out of me. But I enjoy feeling tired. It’s one of life’s pleasures when you get to my age.”

  Susie got up and moved to an old range at the side of the room. She found a stainless steel kettle and a china teapot.

  “Professor Belkin, we’ve taken a considerable risk to visit you today. In fact, believe it or not, the RAF is currently looking for that aeroplane we arrived in.”

  “I see,” the old man said.

  “Can I ask you if you have ever met Squadron Leader Christopher Milford?”

  The professor considered the question for a moment. “Perhaps you should tell me why you’re here.”

  Rob glanced at Susie; she gave a small nod.

  “I’m very sorry to tell you that Millie died in an aircraft accident on the 24th June.”

  The professor bowed his head. “Oh, dear me. That is terribly, terribly sad. I am so very sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you, Professor. He was a good friend. But I’m afraid I rather failed in my duty to him. We’re here to make amends.”

  “Did the bastards kill him?” the professor asked with nonchalance, as if this was a perfectly reasonable question in the circumstances.

  Rob again looked at Susie.

  “We don’t know,” she answered. “Maybe.”

  The professor nodded, appearing to accept this as a potential outcome for Millie.

  “After Millie died,” Rob continued, “they found out what he had been up to. They’re currently trying to portray him as a traitor, but we know better. We know he was trying to prove a new guidance system was fatally flawed, and that the trial to see it into service was a sham. I believe you may have helped him?”

  The professor didn’t answer. Susie left the tea-making and moved from the kitchen area, pulling a piece of paper from her pocket. She unfolded it and handed it to Belkin. He put his reading glasses on and held it up to catch the light from the window.

  Susie sat down at the table.

  Eventually, the professor relaxed his hand, let it drop to his lap and looked at them expectantly.

  “So, what do you need to know?”

  “What does it mean? What did you find out?”

  He looked across to Susie. “I can see that Mr May is with the Royal Air Force, but may I ask about your role, miss?”

  “Attenborough. Susie Attenborough. Can I assume it was you who passed a certain telephone number to Mr Milford?”

  A flicker of recognition passed across his face. “Ah, yes. And can I assume you answered it?”

  “Well, I don’t work on the switchboard, but it did eventually come to me, yes.”

  He seemed satisfied and turned back to Rob, with Millie’s notes still in his hand.

  “This appears to be a combination of notes taken from a telephone call I had with Mr Milford. Oh, must have been… well, the day before he died, I believe.” He looked at the paper again. “But also, some of his own subsequent conclusions.”

  “Millie brought you tapes?” Rob asked.

  “Yes. Mr Milford brought me a series of magnetic tapes. I facilitated the reading of the reels and provided him with a list of statistical anomalies. We also carried out some interpretation of the data based on its operational use. These are the results.”

  Susie leant forward. “Statistical anomalies?”

  “Yes. Sections of data that didn’t fit into the surrounding context.”

  “I’m sorry, could you explain a bit more?” Rob asked.

  “Well, let me put it in more practical terms. Now, as I understand it, the data was gathered by a new form of height-measuring device on board an aircraft? A laser beam?”

  “Millie really did trust you.” Rob smiled at the thought of the two men together.

  “In the end he had to, otherwise I would have found it difficult to complete the tasks he set. Anyway, you would expect the height readings to look consistent with an aeroplane travelling across the land, but let us say that within a time period of less than a second, the height reading showed a difference of one thousand feet. Well, your aircraft would be physically incapable of manoeuvring at such velocity, and therefore the data must be wrong.”

  “So you proved that the system was faulty?”

  Belkin considered this for a moment. “We have to be careful drawing such conclusions. Mr Milford thought it possible that small inaccuracies might happen very often, but they would not likely interfere with the flight, as true readings would flow through before the aircraft’s autopilot would have time to make any changes. What he wanted to know, therefore, is how often inaccuracies lasted long enough to affect the flying. We provided this answer. We also used those numbers to make projections using actual flying statistics.”

  “And the conclusion?” Susie asked.

  “You have it on this piece of paper. Here…” Belkin pointed at a figure on the sheet. Rob leant forward:

  0.9816%

  “That’s how often we saw some sort of deviation. But this figure is the more interesting one.”

  0.014%.

  “That’s how often the figures could be wrong long enough to affect a flight. One and a half tenths of one per cent.”

  “That doesn’t sound very often,” Susie said.

  “True. If you only flew, say a hundred times a year, it would statistically never occur. However, the Royal Air Force flies rather more than that. And as I understand it, we should also consider the flying carried out in the United States of America?”

  “Yes,” Rob said. “We should. So how often are we talking?” He looked at the figures again. “I’m sorry, my maths isn’t quite up to it.”

  “Quite often. Without a pencil and some graph paper I can’t tell you exactly, but maybe a hundred times every ten thousand hours flown.”

  Susie leaned forward, hands on the table. “You’re telling us, this system would cause one hundred crashes in ten thousand hours?”

  “No. Again, there is another layer below this. For the vast majority of those occurrences, the incoherent data would cause a
small deviation, but not enough to be a major problem. Mr Milford was keenly interested in very specific circumstances. Low-level, high speed and banked or approaching rising ground, and for the deviation to instigate a downward deviation rather than cause the aircraft to rise.”

  He picked up the paper. “This, I believe, is his conclusion.”

  262 ll/day

  100/TFR

  5 dys

  250/y

  = 25,000

  0.014% = 3.5

  2.5 Cr/ = 8.75

  Rob crouched down next to Belkin and peered at the sheet. “I still don’t understand the figures.”

  “This is a classic application of statistics. Mr Milford has started with the number of flights, here…” He pointed at the number 262. “And down here is an extrapolation from the data of the more serious anomalies. As I recall, it was a very low number and yet because of the sheer volume of flights every year, it appears that 3.5 flights annually would be critically endangered. I must say, from my recollection of our findings, this is about right.”

  “Hence the 8.75 figure at the end. He’s averaged the crew size across the low-level fleet and come up with 2.5.”

  “2.5 times 3.5?” Susie asked.

  “8.75,” Rob confirmed. “The number of lives in danger annually if Guiding Light goes into service. Here it is, Susie. Here’s the evidence, in black-and-white.”

  Susie turned to Belkin.

  “Professor, where is the actual evidence? Do you still have the tapes and the data?”

  “I’m afraid we destroyed them, on Squadron Leader Milford’s instructions. But there is something else rather important here. These conclusions are not reliable. There simply wasn’t enough data. Not nearly enough. The true figure, that number at the end, has much that is assumed and extrapolated from a very small sample size. I imagined this would be the beginning of an investigation, not the end.”

  Rob didn’t reply; Susie rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry if that’s unwelcome news.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Rob toyed with the sheet of statistics. He stared at the final figure.

  8.75

  “Shall we have that tea now?” Belkin said.